Electronic Health Record
Moving from Paper to Electronic Medical Records
Sutter Health has made a committment to deploy an electronic health record (EHR) networkwide by the end of 2007. The system will be completed years ahead of the national EHR deadline set by the White House.
What is an EHR?
The EHR is an electronic record of a patient’s health history. It includes important information like test and imaging results, medication history, doctors’ notes and general health history – from childhood allergies to surgeries.
It ultimately replaces the paper chart currently used to store the same information. The electronic version of the record can be made available to the patient's caregivers in different locations, more quickly and efficiently.
How can an EHR improve the care I receive?
An EHR helps ensure better, safer and more efficient health care.
It provides doctors with immediate access to your health information wherever you go in our Northern California Sutter Health network.
Whether you end up in the Emergency Department, or a nurse needs to phone an on-call physician in the middle of the night, your chart can be accessed to support important treatment decisions.
It gives your doctors another important tool in treating illness and disease. The EHR is connected to a robust library of medical information that can help physicians in making diagnoses and treatment plans based on the latest medical research.
In some cases, it can generate automatic reminders by mail or e-mail to notify you that you’re due for a checkup, test or immunization.
Just as important, our EHR will allow patients to view important portions of their own health histories and test results online, so you can work even more closely with your doctor to improve your health.
How can an EHR make the care I receive safer?
Because doctors' orders and prescriptions are entered into a computer rather than in handwritten orders, pharmacists and other caregivers have no trouble interpreting the information. This greatly reduces the possibility of transcription errors and other medical mistakes.
And Sutter Health's integrated patient record will uniquely include state-of-the-art patient safety systems like bar coding for patient/drug identification. Read more about bar-coding of medications
How can an EHR make the care I receive more efficient?
Caregivers will no longer need to search or wait for your patient chart. In addition, lab results and X-rays can be sent electronically to your doctors as soon as they are completed, for immediate analysis, diagnosis and treatment.
When will my doctor or hospital to be up and running with the EHR?
Sutter's aggressive online system will electronically connect more than 5,000 physicians, 27 hospitals and millions of patients across its not-for-profit Northern California network by the end of 2007.